profit.
Thirteenth: more abundant and reasonable provision of work by the State,
local authorities and for the unemployed. Fourteenth: a co-ordination
of all philanthropic and charity agencies to form one great society with
branches in every parish.

Give us these things, and surely they are not impossible, and half
our present expensive difficulties would disappear. Fewer prisons,
workhouses and hospitals would be required. The need for shelters and
labour homes would not exist. The necessity for the activities of
many charitable agencies whose constant appeals are so disturbing and
puzzling, but whose work is now required, would pass away too.

But with all these things given, there would be still great need for the
practice of kindness and the development of brotherly love. For without
brotherly love and kindly human interest, laws are but cast-iron rules,
and life but a living death. What is life worth? What can life be worth
if it be only self-centred? To love is to live! to feel and take an
interest in others is to be happy indeed, and to feel the pulses thrill.

And I am sure that love is abundant in our old country, but it is
largely paralysed and mystified. For many objects that love would fain
accomplish appear stupendous and hopeless. What a different old
England we might have, if the various and hopeless classes that I have
enumerated were permanently detained. For then love would come to
its own, the real misfortunes of life would then form a passport to
practical help. Widows would no longer be unceremoniously kicked into
the underworld; accidents and disablements would no longer condemn men
and women to live lives of beggary. Best of all, charitable and
kindly deeds would no longer be done by proxy. It is because I see how
professional and contented beggary monopolises so much effort and costs
so much money; because I see how it deprives the really unfortunate and
the suffering poor of the practical help that would to them be such a
blessed boon, that I am anxious for its days to be ended. May that day
soon come, for when it comes, there will be some chance of love and
justice obtaining deliverance for the oppressed and deserving poor who
abound in London's dark underworld.

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of London's Underworld, by Thomas Holmes

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LONDON'S UNDERWORLD ***

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